Carlos Iturgaiz is leaving the political front line and will hand over his position as president of the Basque PP to a candidate that the national leadership will seek to be of consensus. The still leader of the Basque Popular Party confirmed this Tuesday that the time has come to “take over”, which will be certified in an extraordinary regional congress this November. The deputy for Álava Javier de Ándres; the president of the party in Álava, Iñaki Oyarzabal; and parliamentarian Laura Garrido appear as the favorites to take the baton.
The truth is that it was known that Carlos Iturgaiz would not be the next candidate for lehendakari of the popular Basques; definitive confirmation and the calendar managed by the PP were missing. Finally, the Regional Board of Directors will meet this Wednesday to begin the renewal process at the head of the party.
Iturgaiz, for his part, has confirmed in Onda Vasca that the time has come to "take over" and for another person to lead the training in the Basque Country, once "it has met its objectives" and the "derailed" PP Basque "is on the road, strong, united and stable."
The PP has been working on the replacement for some time, with the Basque elections next spring on the horizon. Finally, the extraordinary congress of the Basque PP will be on November 4. The national leadership of the PP seeks consensus with the provincial organizations of the Basque Country so that in the extraordinary regional congress there is a single candidate to succeed Carlos Iturgaiz in the Presidency.
The person in charge of negotiating it is the Deputy Secretary General of Organization and Feijóo's trusted man, Miguel Tellado, who tomorrow will participate in Vitoria in the regional Board of Directors that will convene the congress.
Previously, Tellado will meet with the three provincial presidents - Raquel González (Bizkaia), Iñaki Oyarzabal (Álava) and Muriel Larrea (Gipuzkoa) - to agree on a consensus candidate between all parties.
Carlos Iturgaiz was a regional parliamentarian (from 1994 to 2004) and candidate for lehendakari in 1998, as well as president of the Basque PP between 1996 and 2004, coinciding with José María Aznar's time in Moncloa. Then, the PP achieved its best electoral results, both with Iturgaiz as a candidate and with Jaime Mayor Oreja as a candidate for lehendakari.
Between 2004 and 2019 Iturgaiz was an MEP, until in April of that year he announced that he was leaving politics after being relegated to 17th place on the PP's European list. However, in February 2020, Pablo Casado, president of the PP at the time, named him a candidate for lehendakari for the elections to the Basque Parliament under the acronym PP Cs. Iturgaiz took over from Alfonso Alonso, beheaded by Casado himself after he expressed his doubts about the terms of the coalition with the orange party.
